


Glen Matthews: The Life Story.

by sebviathan



Series: Untold Janitor Story [1]
Category: Scrubs
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Deaf Character, Drug Use, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M, backstory fic, honestly so SO much angst, implied untreated mental illness, period-typical homophobia and ableism, queerness all around, time period: 60s-90s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 00:45:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3468077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just like everyone else, there's a reason for the way the janitor is and for everything he does. He had a life before meeting J.D., before ever even working at Sacred Heart. </p><p>And it started on May 2nd, 1964 in some unnamed suburb in California.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glen Matthews: The Life Story.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This story is only leading up to Jdanitor--there's no actual subtance of the pairing in it. Up until the very end, the janitor is the only canon character who's even mentioned.
> 
> Also, I did a lot of research for this, but there still may be some slight historical inaccuracies. I can't imagine they would be noticeable to anyone who didn't live as an adult during that time frame, though, and Scrubs exists in a sort of surrealistic universe, anyway. They literally live in the fictional city of "San DiFrangeles."

From the moment he learned how to hold a broom, Glen was always cleaning up everyone else's messes.

His parents weren't lazy, he always figured, they were just old. And his mom couldn't get up to get her own beers because of her back and his dad couldn't get up because when football was on, that meant it was relaxing time. Glen never thought much of it—he was happy to help and he enjoyed making sure things were neat and tidy.

And his parents certainly weren't mean to him because his mom cooked meals all the time and his dad always made sure to spend the weekends with him teaching him all sorts of things. He knew how to skin a rabbit before he could read (it was a much more useful skill, as his dad told him—and it was common in their family to be a little slow in school), and learning to catch squirrels was as easy as potty training.

He only realized that this wasn't a common practice when, during recess in kindergarten, he bagged a squirrel and had several girls screaming for him to let it go.

"My teacher said that killing animals is bad," Glen told his father that weekend, when they went out to do their usual hunting.

"It's only bad if you don't do something useful with it afterward," his dad assured, and Glen remembered that for a long time.

What he and his dad hunted was at least half of what they ate, and the majority of the decoration around the house. Rabbit pelts littered the basement, as did a few fully stuffed ones—according to his dad, one of them is the present that won him his mom. She has been so impressed with him that she'd agreed to go on a second date.

It sounded romantic to him, but no one in school found a squirrel pelt very appealing on Valentine's Day.

Everyone else was weird, as far as Glen was concerned. They were all smaller than him and they often laughed when he spoke (he was missing teeth, he couldn't  _help_  that he had a lisp), and for some reason none of them believed he could talk to birds, even though he got a crow to land in James's hair.

It didn't matter to him, though. He didn't have time for friends, anyway, when he was busy learning important life skills on weekends and cleaning after school. However, he did get very excited when, around halfway through first grade, he learned he would be getting a baby sister.

More excited than his parents seemed to be, even, as the moment he suggested the name  _Beth_  ("it's pretty and my grown up teeth are coming in so I can pronounce it now"), they agreed without much interest.

For several months, as his mother's baby bump turned into a full pregnant belly, Glen was aware that he would be getting more responsibility once she was born. He would have another person to clean up after and take care of, because surely if his parents were too old to get their own beers then they also must be too old to do everything for their new child. It was exciting regardless.

What he didn't expect, though, was that the baby would be born deaf. And naturally that made his mom and dad frustrated—taking care of a baby who couldn't even hear would inevitably be much more difficult. And Glen understood that. But after a year passed and his parents had yet to make any move to even try to learn sign language, he started growing resentful of them.

Yes, they were busy with things, but did they even  _care_? Beth needed extra special treatment and it didn't look like they were trying at all.

But then he felt bad for doubting them. And a little scared. Rather than saying anything to them directly, Glen went to his second grade teacher and asked her how he could learn sign language.

There were books in the school library, as well as some tapes but they needed a projector to work. So he checked out all of the books on ASL and took them home, and he studied them so much that he even started to get less sleep. Weekends were dedicated to teaching Beth the most basic signs now that his dad wasn't taking him out on weekends anymore. Considering the situation, Glen could only assume he was doing fairly well.

The next few years went by slowly, and it only became more apparent with each day that Glen was the one raising Beth. At four years old she could sign whole conversations with him, but she couldn't write much yet so communication directly between her and their parents was impossible. Most of her clothes were hand-me-downs from some of Glen's female classmates, and he was even the one to brush and braid her hair in the morning.

Despite everything, their mother would still try to talk to her at dinner as though she expected her to magically understand, and Glen would always grimace and then sign out as much as he could to her.

Finally, it was the summer where Beth would turn five, right before she was supposed to start school. As soon as Glen realized, he panicked. Beth couldn't go to normal school! She didn't know as much as the other kids, and she wouldn't be able to keep up, even if there was a teacher who knew sign language and could help translate things for her. Worst of all she'd be bullied for being deaf, and Glen himself was starting 6th grade so he wouldn't be anywhere near her during school.

He stopped panicking, however, after a bit of research at the local library—and about a week after that, he found a good time to confront his parents.

It was after lunch, and Beth was having a nap, and both his mother and father looked like they were in a good mood.

"Mom, Dad—I'm just wondering. What are you planning to do when school starts? For Beth, I mean."

His mom promptly raised her eyebrow and plucked her cigarette out from her lips. "What d'you mean? She'll go to school like all the other kids."

"But she's deaf."

"So?" his dad chimed in. "She still has to go to school."

"She can't go to a normal school, though. She has to go to a school for the deaf and hard of hearing," he recited from what he'd rehearsed in his head for the past week, trying hard not to stutter or lisp so his parents would take him seriously. "She's already behind and the people there have been working with deaf kids for years, and—"

"We don't got the kind of money to send her off overseas, son," his mom nearly laughed while his dad chuckled into his beer.

"There's a school in Fremont! That's only an hour away. I looked it up and there's barely any fees—"

"Boy, we don't got  _any_  money, if you didn't notice. The truck runs like shit. Bus tickets to Fremont, plus whatever fees they got at that place?—Ya know what, if you can get the money yourself, we'll take her there."

His dad then grunted in agreement, which pretty much ended the conversation. All Glen could do was nod and go directly outside, where he planned to take up his mom's offer.

He was only ten, and his resources were small, so he knew he had few options. But he was suddenly so determined to make sure that Beth got the education she needed that he might have been willing to do anything.

And then he had to go back inside because he had an idea and it required a couple tools.

His dad made some money every so often off of animal pelts, so why couldn't he? It was just that he had to kill and skin all of these all by himself, and he had to make do with the nearby small-ish game. Nothing bigger than squirrels and suburban rabbits. Maybe some snakes, if he was lucky.

Staying out long enough to do the work he needed, though, for even just the next week, kept him away from Beth. At least she knew and (hopefully) understood why she had to spend a lot of time alone, now, as Glen hadn't hesitated to let her know exactly the situation they were in. Part of him had wanted to keep her blissfully ignorant, but otherwise he needed her to know that  _he_  was the one looking out for her.

"I'm working for the summer so you can go to school," he'd signed the best he could. And she'd nodded, so.

After selling pelts proved not to pay off very well (it was hard to even get all of them off his hands, since he didn't know the right people), Glen stopped that practice for the most part and instead decided to try skills he knew better. Like cleaning.

Even people who weren't at all like his parents liked having someone else clean their house. And as it turned out, many men around his father's age really appreciated seeing a young boy like him working so hard. Enough, in fact, to pay him extra.

He found that people were even  _more_  willing to pay him extra when he mentioned that all the money was meant to help his little sister.

He neglected to say anything about how his parents weren't doing a damn thing, though. Better not to start any trouble.

In the middle of August, Glen was finally able to board a bus with a mildly resentful father, an excited sister, and a backpack full of clothes. Equally excited, he could barely contain himself the whole ride—this was his first time travelling further than Modesto. And naturally, Beth's first time any further than the end of their street.

...And then there was the taxi they had to get from the bus stop to the school. Which Glen hadn't accounted for, and which his dad seemed almost smug about when he had to hand him money for their fare.

But it was worth it when they arrived, just to see the school and know for sure that it was real. The place wasn't exactly grand, but in comparison to his school back home it was extremely clean. And Glen still felt vaguely ashamed about walking into the admissions office with his dad in a stained dress shirt and untrimmed beard.

After his dad filled out an application, they waited about three minutes for a different parent and child to walk out of a back office, and a well-dressed woman with a very tight, black bun gestured for them to walk in.

"Okay, Mr. Matthews," she began, glancing at the application, "this is all pretty standard, if you could just tell me a little bit about your family—"

"Oh, I'm not deaf," he interrupted, rather rudely.

"Excuse me?"

"You were signing at me, but my hearing's fine."

The lady— _Ms. Castillo_ , Glen read on her desk plaque—frowned. And as she spoke, now a bit harshly, she continued to sign.

"Your daughter is deaf, however, and excluding her from the conversation would be rude."

"Oh, I don't think she can understand half the signs you're making anyway," he told her dismissively.

Ms. Castillo frowned even deeper and swept her eyes back and forth between them like a hawk. Glen shrank into his seat, frightened that she wasn't going to accept Beth into the school.

But then her face softened and she glanced at the application again, presumably where his dad had to list all the household members because she then spoke kindly, "Glen, can you sign?"

"Oh—" He blushed, embarrassed because he should have been signing what his dad was saying, but he'd forgotten in his nervousness. "Sorry," he signed.

"That's alright," she said, followed by a sharp turn to his father. "Can, um—can your wife sign, Mr. Matthews?"

He merely shook his head.

"Well, I suggest the two of you take Beth's first year away from home to learn."

Glen's eyes lit up before she was even finished, and he very nearly jumped up. "So she's accepted?"

"Of course," Ms. Castillo smiled. "I've heard all I need to hear. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a small fee of ten dollars for living expenses,"—Glen sighed with relief, knowing that there was still enough after the taxi—"but that won't be needed until you bring Beth back a week from now."

His heart dropped, and all at once tears were coming up and his whole body was shaking and he was ready to  _bawl_  right there in the office.

"Glen—Glen, what's the matter?" Ms. Castillo leaned over the desk to hand him tissues, but he didn't take them.

"We do-on't have enough money for a, a, a second bus t-ticket," he managed to get out as he tried to pull back his sobs for his dad's sake. "I-I didn't know she'd have to wait to move in here, so I—"

Luckily, she saved him from having to explain that he'd had to make all the money for this to work.

"No worries—take a tissue, sweetie. The round-trip bus ticket should be around ten dollars, right? Okay. Really, don't worry, spend the money you have on the ticket next weekend, and I'll pay Beth's school fee myself. Sound good?"

Any other situation and Glen would have resented taking handouts, just like his father, but right now he wanted to hug Ms. Castillo. Seeing as she was on the opposite side of a desk, though, all he could do was give a heartfelt "Thank you" as he stood up to shake her hand.

Beth stood on her tippy-toes and shook her hand as well, signing her thanks. Meanwhile their dad gave her a bland "Gracias" which made her look, for a second, like she wanted to slap him. But she remained polite and smiled at them all as they left.

And when Glen was the only one looking back, she signed at him without speaking and smiled even wider. It wasn't until after he turned back around that it registered to him exactly what she'd said, though.

" _You are a very wonderful boy, Glen._ "

* * *

 

Aside from Beth's crying fit when she realized that Glen wouldn't be staying with her at school, the next weekend went well. Tomorrow she was to start a real education, and Glen would be starting 6th grade.

He seemed to have hit a growth spurt over the summer because now he was not only bigger than all the rest of the students, but disproportionately skinny as well. As someone pointed out on his first day, he was lanky and awkward-looking—but really, so were a lot of other boys. Many of them also already had acne.

Glen was still fairly isolated from the other kids, especially in that he was unintentionally intimidating as well as not very smart. Something that did attract attention, however, was when he had sign language books out at lunch.

There was no more recess, and teachers yelled at him if he was reading while they were talking, so he had to find other time to continue learning. And that seemed to be a surprising sight for others.

"What are you reading about sign language for?" said a loud, female voice one day, and Glen turned around to see a girl looking over his shoulder, lunch tray in hand.

"My sister's deaf," he told her, possibly ruder than he meant to be. He wasn't used to polite conversation with other people, especially not girls.

"Oh, that's nice." Glen immediately scowled. "Oh no, not that she's deaf. I mean it's really nice that you're teaching yourself sign language for her," she assured, nodding and smiling.

"Oh." Glen didn't know what else to say. "Well, thanks."

"My name's Charlie, by the way."

"My name's Glen. And isn't that a boy's name?"

"Well, it's short for Charlotte."

Glen nodded in understanding, and after a couple seconds she just smiled and said, "Nice meeting you," and then ran away to go sit with her friends. He softened in relief and went back to practicing signs.

Charlie didn't come back to talk to him or sit with him (thank God) any of the next days, but Glen could only suspect that she'd gone and talked to other girls about him because now  _they_  were trying to start conversations.

In just a week he was already hearing groups of girls talking about him, calling him a "sweet guy," and giggling as he walked past. Alternatively, some of the other boys seemed jealous that he was getting attention when he didn't even do anything.

Admittedly it was nice, having people (well, mostly girls) want to be his friend now, but all the public attention was too much, and it was sending out a message that he didn't want. He kind of liked the reputation of being odd and intimidating, honestly. And now Charlie had gone and changed it, and everything was hectic and getting in the way of things he needed to do.

The next week, Glen decided that he needed to get her back. She deserved it for what she did, even if she hadn't meant to.

So at lunch he simply walked up to her table, ignored her greeting, and poured his juice over her head. It was met with pure shock from her surrounding friends, a shriek from Charlie herself, and an adult shout from across the cafeteria.

Glen went home that day to find his mom on the phone, cigarette in one hand and a smirk on her face.

"I'm sure he just has a crush on her or somethin'—boys are weird like that. Mmhm. Well. Glen's weird anyway. I'll tell him, yeah. G'bye."

"Who was that?" he asked as soon as the phone was back on the receiver.

"A teacher from your school. So who is this girl? She pretty?"

He didn't feel like explaining the actual situation, so he just shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."

His mom didn't hound him more than that. And more importantly, neither did Charlie. She left him alone entirely, and things were mostly back to normal.

Maybe he would have time for friends eventually, but Glen still spent much of his time working. He continued to clean his neighbors' houses for money, as well as sweeping up stores and the local library. It was minimal pay, since he couldn't be allowed to get a legitimate job at this age, but he needed all he could get. Every penny was to be saved up toward getting Beth home for Christmas and then back again, as well as back home for the summer.

Any reasonable extra, Glen used to get himself a coke or some other treat every once in a while.

And sometimes, he threw in a bit for the necessary expenses that his parents seemed to be getting  _worse and worse_  at providing. By the time Beth was home for Christmas that year they could just barely sign basic phrases, and yet they used "all the hard work they were doing for her" as an excuse to not be doing  _real_  work.

In the following years, Glen became truly resentful more and more often. He was not only the only one raising Beth, but he was raising himself, too. On top of that, he still took care of the house as well as his parents,  _and_  he turned in at least half his schoolwork—and when Beth came home for the summer, he was the one teaching her the important skills she should have been getting from their dad. He was even the one to buy her treats on her birthday.

It was a confusing relationship, though, him and his parents. They didn't hit him except when he talked back and Glen was pretty sure they didn't yell more than most parents, but they were just... neglectful, he figured. But while they might have hardly noticed that he was gone for an entire day, the next time they saw him his dad would be sharing a beer with him and his mom would be giving him a slew of advice. He never had any idea when they were suddenly going to act like they cared.

The neglect was even worse with Beth, though. Even after all this time they still didn't think the effort was worth being able to talk to their daughter normally, and instead they just wrote things down for her when she was home. And periodically insisted that she learn to read lips.

Glen had to admit—as much as he loved his sister—that he preferred it when she wasn't there. Because she was sure as hell much better off at school.

* * *

 

Around the time Glen started smoking, he also realized that he liked boys.

The only reason he went on to remember that was because he smoked his first cigarette (stolen from his mom's dresser) on his thirteenth birthday, and later that month, he tagged along with a couple guys in his class to see the premiere of  _Star Wars: A New Hope_  in theatres. Which was where he decided that he  _really_  liked Han Solo.

Leia was nice to look at too, but she just didn't hold the same intensity of desire for him. It wasn't complicated; Glen was starting puberty, and there were some pretty obvious signs when he looked at Han that didn't happen when he looked at Leia. Or any other girls, for that matter.

He didn't mention it to any of the guys he came with, of course. But he wasn't ashamed of it. Hell, he was actually glad—being weird was pretty much his trademark. Everything that society stood for was dumb, so if who he found attractive wasn't socially acceptable, who the fuck cared?

Well, yeah, it meant he had to keep a part of him secret. And it meant he couldn't date. But when Glen really thought about it, and when he looked around himself at school, there wasn't a single boy he thought he'd ever like to date. He barely even wanted to be friends with anyone. For the most part he just hated people.

So liking boys wasn't really  _liking boys_ , Glen supposed. He just liked Harrison Ford.

But high school changed that. A whole year had passed since his realization that he was queer, and a lot of the other boys had gone through growth spurts in that time. Some of them were at eye-level with him, even. They were growing into their bodies and wearing their hair differently and... suffice it to say, Glen had a lot to look at.

He had to be careful about it, though. His demeanor probably made him the kind of guy who would be suspected last, but the guys around him were starting to get cruel about that. Boys got shoved into lockers and spray-painted with slurs if another guy thought he might have looked at him in the locker room—or hell, even if he just looked the part. Glen was big, but his size wouldn't keep him safe if there were enough guys against him.

But really, he was safe. Especially since he was less of a recluse now. He figured it would be useful to make some friends, get some connections—people whom he could eventually manipulate into doing things he wanted. High school, as TV had led him to believe over the years, would be hell without some people by your side.

So he sat with a group of guys at lunch, and he joined in on conversations at the lockers about which girls were the hottest. (Being queer didn't make a difference there, seeing as he could still look at a girl and form an objective opinion as to whether or not she was pretty.) They all thought he was cool because of how he smoked, and how he could trap another guy in a headlock without even trying—somehow even his fluency in sign language impressed them.

And because of that, he got free stuff. Smokes, soda, whatever. It didn't matter that he was terrible in just about every subject but Art and Spanish (both of which he actually had quite the knack for) because one of the guys, Raymond, was a bit of a nerd and was perfectly willing to do his work for him.

Any spontaneous plan Glen had, whether it was revenge on some asshole who said something about him or just a fun idea he wanted to try out, they were on it. Anytime he had a decision and needed a second opinion, they were ready to discuss. Halfway into the school year they were doing just about anything he told them to do, no hesitation. He had himself a fairly solid brain trust.

They also respected that once the bell rung at the end of the day, he was no longer their friend. Glen still had work to do and a home to look after, and though he didn't actually tell the brain trust about his home life (in fact, he lied compulsively about it), they must have realized that he was a busy guy. Possibly because of how years of stress (and the recent smoking) had affected his appearance.

It was so bad, actually, that by the time he was a sophomore, he had no problem buying beer without even a fake I.D.

With that discovery, Glen decided that there was nothing keeping him from getting a real job and simply lying about his age—why wait another eight months to do it legally? It would also leave him more time for himself, since he wouldn't be running around doing hard work for not much money at all.

Coincidentally, the only place within semi-reasonable walking distance that was even hiring was a Korean restaurant that needed a busboy. Most of the employees were part of the same family and they didn't speak much English, so they probably wouldn't even have cared about his age.

High school became significantly easier once he started that job. Regulated hours meant more sleep, which meant a better mood during the day. Though it also meant less of an excuse when his parents asked him why he didn't have a girlfriend yet—he couldn't tell them that he just didn't have time for one.

"You're a good-looking kid—you've even gotten less weird, I don't get it," his dad told him one night at dinner.

"I dunno, Dad, maybe they think I'm too tall," he suggested ironically. Girls seemed to  _love_  how tall he was, if anything. But his dad didn't know that.

Before he could inhale the rest of his food and hurry away to wash his plate, though, his mom chimed in with some advice:

"Well, you should probably find a girl soon, if you don't want anyone to think you're queer."

As much as Glen genuinely  _did not give a flying fuck_  about what was "socially acceptable," he eventually found his mother's advice worthwhile.

At the end of his sophomore year, Sandra Carter was hosting a house party and, according to his brain trust, she wanted to pay him to buy alcohol for it (and if he chose not to, then he couldn't come). So naturally he agreed, and he got a ride with the guys to the other, richer side of town.

He'd never been to a party before, but he had a vague idea. Really the point of any high school party, it seemed, was for a lot of people to hang out in a big house and get drunk and make out indiscreetly—which gave Glen the idea. While his unattractive friends proceeded to induce confidence with alcohol and obnoxiously flirt with girls way out of their league,  _he_  executed a simple plan.

Leaning against the wall, drink in hand, Glen barely even had to wait that long. He was a  _magnet_.

"Hey, you're the one who brought all the beer and shit, right?" a girl asked, leaning on the wall beside him. She had curled brown hair and looked awfully familiar.

"That would be me," he answered charmingly, tipping his drink-and then he recognized exactly who she was. "Wait, you're—holy shit, I spilled juice on your head once. Well, I poured it, but."

Her eyes widened, but she was still smiling. "Oh my God, that  _was_  you! And wow, that was what, four years ago? You got so tall!"

His grudge towards Charlie wasn't entirely gone, but whatever malice she ever felt against him was clearly irrelevant now that he was all grown up and attractive. Within a couple minutes, the conversation had already grown twice as flirtatious, and then in the next one after that, they were sitting on the floor with her in his lap and their lips glued together.

Glen didn't need to be extra drunk or to imagine Harrison Ford to get through it or anything—it was perfectly enjoyable.  _Baba O'Riley_  was playing on the radio and the alcohol was warm in his chest, and he was having his first real kiss with a pretty girl. All of his intense fantasies about Han Solo seemed to have paid off in giving him a little practice because they kept going, and before he knew it they were making out with tongue and everything.

Best of all (and just as planned), people were noticing. He could hear muffled shouts of "Hey, check out Glen," from across the room (though really he was paying attention to the end of the song), and there were a couple nearby congratulatory whistles. He very nearly put his hand on the side of her boob, mostly out of curiosity, but Charlie jerked away all of a sudden to run to the bathroom. Whether to pee or to puke, he wasn't sure.

Well, he got what he needed. He figured that it might be a good idea to kiss at least one more girl before the party was over, but no need to rush.

About thirty minutes later the room was gathered in a circle of Truth or Dare, and funnily enough the second spin landed on Glen and resulted in him being dared to kiss Tommy, the boy sitting next to him. Who was actually one of the much better-looking guys in their school and a junior to boot.  _Oh, how terrible_.

"For how long?" he asked, forcing himself to sound like he wasn't excited.

"Ten seconds, minimum."

He gave Tommy that  _what can you do, man_  sort of shrug and went in for it, unthinkingly bringing his hands up to grab his face as well.

The girl who dared him immediately started counting down, and a few others joined in; for the first couple seconds Glen kept his lips mostly still. But then Tommy started turning it into a real kiss, like he really meant it, and Glen went with it, thinking everyone would just figure they were super drunk anyway. Tommy must have been, at least.

It didn't mean anything, of course, and there wasn't even a good song playing in the background this time, but Glen's face was on fire and his heart was racing and when the ten seconds ended, he pulled away with a dazed smile on his face and a slight ache for more.

Okay, a deep ache for more.

And to be fair, Tommy had the same kind of smile.

But they both wiped their faces a moment later and it was Glen's turn to spin the bottle, and he ended up daring a girl to flash her breasts to the room for three seconds. Just a generic dare, really.

The only reason Glen stuck around after the game was because, after another drink, he felt the intense need to corner Tommy on his way out of the bathroom. That was, to push him back into the bathroom and lock the door.

It was a hunch, but a  _strong_  hunch—and one that luckily turned out to be right when Tommy welcomed his second kiss instead of pushing him away. He didn't even say anything, but just backed himself into the wall so Glen could press up against him. And damn, he barely knew anything about the guy but his hormones were running wild and he was fucking  _sixteen_  so he really should have been getting his rocks off with  _someone_  around now...

Just as he was tucking his shirt out of his jeans, though, there was a hard knock at the bathroom door.

"Hey, what are you doing in there?"

They both froze, staring at each other with no idea what to do. Surprisingly Tommy was the one to speak up and save the day—"Smoking pot." He even sounded believably stoned.

"Oh," came the voice from outside the door. "Mind sharing?"

Both Glen and Tommy rolled their eyes.

"Sorry man, I'm out."

"Well, hurry up then. I gotta shit."

The next minute was filled with Glen reluctantly climbing out the bathroom window as quietly as possible, punctuated with a quick smirk to Tommy before he dropped and grabbed his brain trust from inside so they could take him home.

God, what a  _party_.

* * *

 

After exams on the last week of sophomore year, Glen went to the school admissions office and formally dropped out.

It wasn't something that he worked out with his brain trust, either—he wasn't going to let them know that he felt lacking in proper ambition, or even the kind of intelligence it took to achieve traditional success with college and a career. As far as they knew he was simply too busy to do his own homework, but really he was just stupid. Math and Science didn't make any sense to him, and he  _still_  didn't know how to write an analytical essay, and reading gave him headaches.

Not that those things mattered to him in the long run. If he quit school and just got his GED instead, then he'd be able to work full-time at the Korean place. He had a plan: Continue working part-time for a month and use his spare hours to practice driving with his dad's truck. Get his license. Start working full-time. Save up until he had enough money for his own car-cheapest as possible, so there was still enough money to go to Beth. Ultimately he should have been able to have a legitimate college fund for her.

What he didn't foresee, though, was a knock at the door during the summer that turned out to be Tommy Belford, the kid from the party.

"I hope this isn't too much of a surprise," he said with a nervous grin, wringing his hands.

Glen glanced back at Beth, who was sitting where she could see the threshold, and at his mom, who was napping on the couch. He immediately got his sister's attention and signed that he would be back soon, then stepped outside and closed the door.

"About the party," Tommy started again—but Glen immediately put a hand on his back and started walking, directing them around to behind the house and into his shed. where he pulled a string hanging from the ceiling and turned on a dim light. This was the only place nearby where they could be completely alone.

"You want to do it again." It wasn't a question. Glen found it obvious, anyway. Dating wasn't simple for guys like them, and this was a lucky shot.

"I was thinking we could pick up where we left off, actually," he said, lips stretching into a cute grin. "I mean, and then do it again. And more times. If you get the picture."

Tommy was ready to lean in, and Glen didn't see any reason to stop him—and just like that, they were kissing in a dusty shed. There was no way a guy like him was ready to drop his pants in a place like  _this_ , though, and Glen had to cut it short before they got too deep anyway.

"I promised my sister I'd spend all day with her until I went to work," he told him. It felt odd to be saying something like that in this kind of embrace. "Can you drive?"

"Yeah, I got my own car."

"Well, I work at the Korean place on Main. Come pick me up at nine."

With that, Glen escorted him out of the shed and saw him off with a slap on the ass and a wink.

Tommy was more of a summer fling than anything. They certainly weren't boyfriends, not with their sporadic rendezvous and clear lack of sharing personal information that wasn't explicitly about their queerness. Not that they ever really discussed exactly what they were.

But they were just too different. It wasn't the whole rich-poor thing, no—Tommy was too  _smart_. He knew all about Shakespeare and Thomas Hobbes and whoever else, and while listening to him ramble on was kind of nice sometimes, Glen didn't understand a word of it. And he just couldn't believe what a nerd this guy actually was, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone else.

Glen figured that they had exactly two things in common: queer, and beer. Tommy had to feel it, too. So after a point they stopped pretending this was anything other than a chance to get some sexual experience and kept the talking to a minimum.

His first handjob was in the passenger seat of a Ford Escort. His first blowjob (both giving and receiving) was in the back. And his first time fucking a guy was on a blanket near the mountains; the romantic setting didn't make it any less tedious, though, and Tommy actually cried from the pain, which put Glen off from being willing to let it happen to himself any time soon.

They were both fine when it ended, too. Getting off was all they could have reasonably gotten out of that relationship, and they did so plenty of times. So much, in fact, that Glen found the idea of sex or even an actual boyfriend relatively unappealing for a long while after.

For the next year, he simply worked towards his plan. The busboy job consumed his time until he finally bought a decent car for himself, and then it continued to consume just as much time but at least it  _felt_  a lot better. No more walking to work, no more waiting for movies to make it to television, and no more bus rides. He could pick Beth up himself—hell, he could even visit her on weekends if he missed her enough.

And honestly, he loved seeing his dad continue to have the same trouble every single day with his old shitty truck that he'd been driving to the same shitty job for thirty shitty years. On one side of it he could understand why his old man did that—it was an aversion to change. Glen had it too, which was the only thing that brought him comfort whenever he was confronted with the idea that he didn't really have any kind of goal.

He had the plan, yeah, but all that amounted to at this point was keep working. He had the car, and he had money saved up. How long was he going to keep working at that place and supporting parents who never did a damn thing for him?

As comfortable as the timeless haze of monotony could be, it drove him crazy at times. Glen knew he could do more than wipe down tables, but nothing drew up a future for him. Art had been his strong suit throughout his two years of high school, but he had to be in a particular mood to use that skill. He was reasonably fit and strong, but hard labor for the rest of his life, after 18 years of stress? He'd be dead at 35.

More interestingly, aside from ASL he was also fluent in Spanish and Korean. The latter from simply listening to the Myeong family speak and picking up on key phrases over a course of nearly three years. Languages came unnaturally easily to him—which was ironic, since he'd been slow with learning how to use his own. That was undeniably useful, just not for anything he wanted.

But what did he want? It was an impossible question, which made Glen feel bad because it meant he didn't even know himself.

There were a lot of specific, unrelated things. He wanted to meet Harrison Ford, for one. And he wanted to see a real explosion. He wanted to punch a whale. He wanted to beat a world record, possibly for digging the deepest hole ever done with one man and one shovel. He wanted a tattoo—he didn't know of  _what_ , yet—and to grow a whole beard just to shave it off. He wanted to throw actual tea into the actual Boston harbor. He wanted to wear the Pope's hat. And someday he wanted to get married. No kids, though, unless he could somehow make them physically interesting. He had yet to decide between wings and gills.

The next time Beth came home for summer break, he told her all of those things and she agreed that what it sounded like, basically, was that Glen wanted to travel the world. Which was extremely difficult when he factored in his family and lack of money that was allowed for himself (there was currently a couple thousand saved just for Beth's college).

She had only just turned twelve, but she clearly understood that her brother was an adult who was stuck, and who had so far in fact spent his entire  _life_  being an adult. He was the reason for the past eight years of her education, both on the books and off them, and he had even sacrificed his own. She knew that Glen deserved to do and be more than this.

"Maybe start small," she eventually signed to him, after he'd thought the conversation was over. "You can't go far yet, but what about San Francisco? It's so close but we've never been. And I want to see the Golden Gate Bridge."

If it was something that Beth wanted, then how could he refuse? And she was right. It was only two hours away, and they could easily go that weekend when he was off work.

"Yeah, sure. Let's do that."

* * *

 

To Glen the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't nearly as impressive as expected, but Beth, being much smaller, must have found it enormous. Seeing her so excited about being in the city was just as great as being in the city himself—though one thing she couldn't appreciate quite as much as he did was how openly  _queer_  everything was.

Gay couples out in the open everywhere. Women with short hair. Women who used to be men. Men who used to be women. Clubs with windows that weren't blacked out. He didn't know why he never came here before.

Beth seemed in awe by the sheer diversity, but didn't ask any questions like Glen had expected once he'd noticed men holding hands on just about every corner. So he figured it was a good time to let her know.

They were sitting in an ice cream shop (after an hour-long wait, it had been so busy), and over a bite of sherbet Glen simply signed, "I'm gay."

"What's that?" Beth must have never learned that sign at school. It wasn't surprising.

So he signed out the individual letters, and she donned a face of understanding.

"You don't care, right?"

"Of course not."

And then Beth finished her ice cream. It was that simple. Glen was glad, since his sister was just about the only person in the world whose opinion he valued.

He considered her easy acceptance the highlight of the trip until, just as they were about to leave Golden Gate Park and start the two-hour drive back home, Beth pointed out posters advertising a charity race. It was being hosted at the Kezar Stadium, which was in the park, and the $10 admission fee was nothing compared to the thousand dollar prize.

"You should do it," she told him. "You're fit, and a fast runner. You have nothing to lose."

Well, there was ten bucks he might not get back. But the whole point of this trip was because life wasn't fulfilling enough at home, and really, the possibility of $1000—he was game.

There were several groups of people around the field, talking and stretching. As well as what looked like a news crew. Was this going to be on TV? Holy shit, he was gonna get to be on TV.

"Is it too late to sign up?" he asked when he found someone who looked like they were in charge.

"Which college do you attend?" the man asked without looking up.

"Uh, none."

"So you'll be representing yourself, then... Name?"

"Glen Matthews."

He paid the fee and received a number, and was told that he better get changed soon because even though he was in one of the last groups for the first part of the race, he wouldn't be able to leave once it started.

And of course he didn't have an actual track uniform (despite the heat, he was in jeans and a t-shirt), so he made do with his undershirt and a pair of shorts he managed to borrow by lying that his little sister had dropped ice-cream on his own. Only after he put them on did he realize that his legs were so much whiter than his face that it was obvious he wasn't a runner—but the call of a $1000 prize seduced him regardless.

As he watched six teams of runners weed out into seven first-round winners, it seemed more and more likely to Glen that he was just going to make a fool of himself. But before he went out to run, Beth gave him a high-five for good luck that oddly boosted his confidence.

And he didn't know if the high-five actually had anything to do with it, but he beat his group as the only person representing himself to make it to the second half of the race.

Maybe it was his long legs and high stamina, or maybe it was pure luck. Or maybe, he thought as the moment he reached the finish line, barely half a second before another runner, God just really wanted him to win that one-thousand dollars.

The other runners looked fairly pissed—the second-placer more than anyone else, since she'd lost by so little. Meanwhile all that mattered to him was the money, though it was pretty funny. Of all the useless things he could have been genuinely talented at, it was  _running_.

Beth congratulated him and asked if she could hold the stack of cash for a second (she had never seen that much money in her life), and Glen intended to return the shorts he'd borrowed and leave soon after. But before he could, a man approached him from the crowd and immediately stuck out his hand in greeting.

"Chuck McDermott, hi." He shook Glen's hand and ignored his confused frown. "That was pretty impressive—you don't look like you have much practice, though. No offense."

"None taken. I don't. Just, uh—wanted the prize money, really."

"That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about," he said, and he gave Glen an ambitious smile. "I'm gonna cut to the chase. I don't know you, but I see you've got skill. And you don't know me, but you want money. You made a thousand dollars today with almost zero training behind your belt—imagine how much money you could make winning races  _with_  practice. If you had an agent who could get you funded for travel, training, all of that—- _me_ _—_ you could eventually get to the point where a thousand dollars would be nothing to you. Whaddaya say?"

Glen could only stare back for a moment, trying to decide whether or not he wanted to trust this guy.

Looked like running wasn't so useless of a talent after all.

* * *

 

That was the moment that Glen's life turned around.

Within a month of the trip, he was signing a contract and quitting his job at the Korean restaurant. Nearly three years of working at that place and now he was saying goodbye without much of a second thought to how much the Myeongs might miss him.

Beth was also back at school, and without any sense of obligation to taking care of his parents anymore he didn't hesitate to simply live in a hotel in San Francisco for the time being.

"So you're gonna be in races for money?" his dad asked after he announced he would be leaving. "I never knew you were athletic."

"Me neither," his mom choked out, having just taken a drag of her fifth cigarette this morning.

"Well, you guys never really knew anything about me," was all Glen could say.

"You never told us!"

"You never asked."

Glen ran every day to build his stamina even further. Jumping hurdles came easy as well—no surprise. He ate healthier under orders from a trainer and toned down his legs, and all-around felt better. Even with all the exercise routines he had so much more free time without a full-time job and managed to spend a lot of it catching up on movies and watching new releases whenever he came out. It felt great, to finally be the kind of guy who could afford to be a pop culture nut.

Well, really, it was all just paid for by his agent. Chuck told him that he would make more than enough money to pay it back once he competed in more races and got sponsors.

Just the practicing alone got him plenty of attention, though. Running in public put him out there, and it was ridiculous how many women offered him water or just otherwise wanted to talk whenever he stopped for a break. As well as men, of course, since it was San Francisco—but he didn't have any desire for a relationship those days, or even a one-night stand. He imagined it was because of all the adrenaline he already released on a daily basis.

He welcomed the attention, though. Especially when he started the actual races.

Over the next year Glen won race after race, travelling statewide and occasionally outside, consistently in near disbelief that this was his life. More money was going to Beth's fund with each passing month, and she seemed so utterly proud of her big brother when she was able to see him. That made everything even better.

It wasn't real fame, but it was the kind of attention that Glen realized he'd been craving his whole life. To the point that he didn't mind the shameless advertisement, and he willingly kept up a public image, and he even allowed a new crew to form around himself. Not a brain trust or anything like that, but just a few fans who stuck around and did some things for him. Brought him water after a race, handed him cigarettes, things like that.

But that was brief. Because despite all that he had grown to love—despite the money and the  _winning_ , and how his win at nationals got him a date with Amy Carter (it didn't matter that she was a woman and a fairly plain one at that—you  _don't_  say no to a date with a president's daughter), it all just became too much.

"The time you had at nationals—that was amazing. You are literally a  _world-class_  hurdler." Chuck had his hands on Glen's shoulders, and he could feel his agent's enthusiasm running through him. "Listen. You've only been going for a year, so this is big. But at this rate I could get you into the Olympic team. Another year from now and there'll be cereal boxes with your face on 'em—all you have to do for now is renew your contract. Hell, there'll be crowds of ladies—or gents, if that's your deal—outside your door every morning, even. How does that sound?"

 _The Olympics._  That was the route he was headed with this, and it was so much more than he could have ever hoped for. It was so much more than he'd ever even  _wanted_. It was too high. What if he jumped and missed? What if he just crashed?

It wasn't even just fear of failure. Glen stared at Chuck and gaped, and his thoughts whirred on their way to what should have seemed like the obvious decision, but... he could see clearly. That wasn't what he wanted to do with his life and it had taken him a year to realize it.

"I'm not signing another contract," he finally said, shaking his head down at Chuck.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm never running in another race ever again. I don't want to."

And he never did. Some people would never understand how he could possibly make a decision like that—especially how he could neglect to return  _Amy Carter_ 's calls—but he wasn't the most rational of men. The very next day he was already out of D.C. and driving back home to parents who were likely going to be unsurprised that he was giving up.

Back to square one.

For the next few months, Glen worked a new job as a cashier and resumed his old cleaning duties around the house. That is, he carried on taking care of parents who didn't deserve it. But if he was living there again he figured he ought to.

At this point he was just depressed. Even when he was working all he wanted to do was sleep because it all seemed pointless. Perhaps he  _was_  meant to just stay there and live without ambition, but if that was the case, then why wasn't he content? He wanted to do things. He wanted to have a fulfilling life. He just didn't know what exactly was supposed to fill it, and especially now that he had just tanked one option, he didn't have any way to find out what he wanted to do when he had a sister in school and parents who were going to neglect her.

And so it just went on like that. Slightly better than it used to be, but still stuck.

Beth was initially sad that he had chosen to come back to this life, and in the time that she was home from school, she grew steadily more worried.

She often had to be the one to wake Glen up in the morning, especially on the days he didn't work. She brought him meals when he wasn't making any effort to eat on his own. And after a point, she was outright begging him to leave town again or at least to move out and stop ruining his life just for her sake.

"Mom and Dad aren't fit parents," was the argument he always came back with. "Someone needs to get you to and from school and someone needs to make sure you have a college fund, and I can't just leave you."

"I'm fifteen now, I can take care of myself. I know how to get a taxi and a bus and either way I have friends I can stay with. My teachers say I'm so smart I shouldn't even have a problem getting into college. As long as you make sure to visit sometimes, I'll be fine. But you won't be fine if you stay. You're miserable."

Glen was still iffy about it for a while—being the sole guardian of his little sister for most of his life naturally made him unwilling to give up responsibility. But thinking rationally about it, she was very smart. She was about to start learning to drive on her own, even. She was also big for her age, as it was in her genetics, so he couldn't doubt that she would be safe.

And she was right. He  _was_  miserable. Despite his lack of clear goals he knew he would be happier the moment he was on the road and out of California, just to know he was on the way to finding out what he wanted to do with his life.

He had money. He had work ethic where he would inevitably begin to run out. He had a car. And he had a suitcase somewhere, which Beth helped him pack after he helped her with her own.

Ultimately Glen agreed, and after dropping his sister off for yet another year at school, he drove away with no intention of going home.

* * *

 

The first time his car stopped was later that evening, outside a gay bar in Reno.

For a long while he'd been abstinent—not on purpose but out of neglect. But now that he was officially out of his house—out of California, even—he craved companionship. He wanted to see and talk to other people, and honestly he just  _really_  wanted to hook up with a guy.

So he found a guy who fit his type (a bit shorter than himself, dark hair, pretty eyes) and bought him a drink, and fucked him in a motel. The guy left before the sun rose and Glen never learned his name, but that was one of the best nights he'd had in quite some time.

And he continued doing it. They were all just hookups, nothing more serious than a conversation over drinks beforehand and maybe staying until the morning. At this rate, actually, he might as well have added a new goal to his list: have sex with at least one guy in every major city.

In the next month he was hitting a lot of the Rocky Mountain States, only ever sticking around to see some landmarks or watch a movie in theatres—his rule was: if there was enough hype that he saw posters, he absolutely had to see it. Despite the frequent sex he was still fairly lonely, though he easily kept his mind off of it just by driving and keeping the radio on. Sometimes he thought that maybe that was just what he needed to do for the rest of his life. Keep his mind off of everything, forever.

When he hit up a bar in Phoenix, though, that all changed.

Before he could even scope out a guy, the bartender slid him a beer and gestured to a guy sitting down the bar. "Courtesy of that guy over there."

He gave Glen a smile and a wave, and as he smiled and nodded in return, the guy took that as invitation to come over.

"You seem like a beer kind of guy, but I could buy you something else if you want."

"Beer's fine," he insisted. "I'm Glen."

"Mike."

He wasn't exactly Glen's type physically—blonde curls, a bit of a beard, and a body type pretty similar to his own—but they hit it off well, and he was attractive regardless. Mike was one of those guys that you saw in a gay bar and probably wondered for a second if he was a straight man who'd just wandered into the wrong place, and then assumed he was just a closet case. But he wasn't. He was just as queer as the next guy in here, and even more well-versed on the history of the community.

Glen listened to him rant about the AIDS crisis and alienation of certain identities within the queer community, and most of it went over his head, but he was fairly impressed. And he was interested, though at this point in their conversation he had no idea how to turn it to sex, or if he even wanted to have sex right away. Hell, he might have wanted to just take him on a date if Mike hadn't made a move.

"You ever had sex with a woman before?" he eventually asked.

"Nope. Kissed some, though. And I've been on some dates." He briefly considered mentioning his date with Amy Carter, but decided that Mike probably wouldn't even believe him. And he didn't want to get into a whole discussion about his running days.

"You ever want to?"

Glen shrugged. "I don't have anything against it. I mean, it really doesn't make a difference with kissing. And sometimes I do see a girl so pretty that sex crosses my mind. Not often, though."

And then Mike leaned forward a bit and spoke a bit softer. "Well then, I hope this isn't too forward, but do you want to have a threesome with me and my girlfriend?"

 _Girlfriend?_  An hour they'd been talking, and he hadn't said anything about a girlfriend.

At Glen's initial confusion, Mike just said, "It's a pretty open relationship. Look—she's over there dancing with a lesbian. She's the blonde one with the shorts and the tattoo."

"Oh, damn."

"Yeah."

"Okay. Yeah. I'll do it."

Her name was Fallon and she took a liking to him as quickly as Mike had. Granted, she was mildly drunk and seemed touchy-feely anyway, but on their way to a motel she was already halfway on Glen's lap, asking him questions and rubbing his chest and kissing his face.

"Been a while since we had another guy, huh?" she said to Mike when they got there, still clinging onto him a bit, like she was examining him. It was a little weird, but he didn't mind.

"Yeah—" he looked to Glen—"for some reason it's harder to find men who are okay with it. There's too much pressure on guys to only be attracted to one or the other."

He didn't know what to say, so he just nodded and let Fallon kiss him some more, turning his head so she could get his mouth—and it was nice for the few seconds that she managed, but then there were bigger hands on him and a "Hey, you have to share him."

Somehow Fallon managed to slip away from him unnoticed while Mike stepped in front and started kissing him, then pulled him further into the motel room until they were both kneeling on the bed. Glen didn't know how threesomes usually went, but it felt like the right time to pull their shirts off, so he went for it. And Mike's hands almost immediately went for his chest, tugging at his chest hair and rubbing at his nipples, which were unfortunately not that sensitive but he didn't mind it—and he nearly forgot there was even a girl in the room until he felt skinny arms snake around him and breasts against his back.

"You're too stiff, Glen," she mumbled against his neck, her soft hands sliding down to undo his belt. Mike agreed with an "Mmhm" against his lips and went to kissing his jaw right after.  _Holy shit._

"Sorry," was all he could think to say—it was so new, being like this. Sandwiched in between two people and not knowing if he should be turning around and kissing Fallon again, or touching her breasts, or—

"You ever do drugs?" she asked him, interrupting his thoughts.

"I smoke and drink. That's it."

"Well, dope makes you last longer, and it's pretty great for sex once in a while. Mike, you wanna?"

"If Glen's okay," he said, pulling back to look at him questioningly.

He hadn't ever really thought about it before, but drugs in general didn't hold anything negative for him. So once again, he made a spontaneous decision to get sucked into something brand new, and agreed.

Glen wasn't sure exactly how long it went on after that. They were right—it made him last longer than he ever had in his life before he came, and in fact he came  _twice_  because after watching him give head to his girlfriend (which was probably only enjoyable because he was on dope), Mike wanted to fuck him.

He'd been doing it all wrong years ago with Tommy, he figured, because Mike lubed him up enough that it didn't even hurt. Or it might have been the dope. There was really no way to tell.

Fallon didn't even try to get involved, but instead just watched them fuck and touched herself—and as it turned out, being watched helped Glen get off even more.

The next day, the sound of the motel manager banging on the door and telling them they needed to leave was what woke him up. Mike curled into one side of him, and Fallon on the other, he found himself scrambling to get up and get dressed.

"Jesus, what time is it?" he muttered.

Midday sunlight was streaming through the window. He looked around for a wall clock, but Mike sat up and found his watch faster.

"3 P.M. Haha, oops."

He and Fallon were much more relaxed in getting their shit together, and even after they were able to leave and awkwardly shuffle past the angry manager at their door, they seemed far too casual about everything.

Glen didn't know if he should say goodbye or just leave. Or maybe they were just gonna give him a ride back to the bar, which really would have only been polite since his car was back there—he decided to ask.

But before he could even open his mouth, Fallon clutched her stomach and whined. " _Fuck_ , I'm starving. We should go get burgers."

"What are you in the mood for, Glen?" Mike asked, surprising him.  _Guess I'm not out yet._

"Uh... I could go for a burger, yeah." And before he could stop himself, "Maybe one of those diners with burgers and chocolate shakes."

"Oh my God,  _yeah_." Fallon smiled wide and grabbed both his and Mike's arms. "My mouth is actually still a little dry, too. And now that Glen said it, I'm craving it and I'm not gonna stop. Let's go."

Mike grinned at him as Fallon started leading them back to the car, and oddly enough it was that which first gave Glen the idea that he wasn't leaving this one at all.

* * *

 

"So, where do you guys live?"

Somehow it hadn't come up last night, but the answer didn't surprise him.

"Eh, nowhere," Mike shrugged, his mouth still partially full of burger. "Neither of us could ever figure out what we wanted, so we both started travelling and eventually met on the road."

Glen chuckled in a way that made him imagine a twinkle in his eye. "I'm doing the same, actually."

"Well, stick with us, then," Mike said, glancing to Fallon for approval and getting a strong nod of agreement.

It was a heavy proposal, but Glen had already been thinking about it and couldn't think of a single reason why not. He did have a reason to hesitate, though—

"We both have cars, though, and neither of us have homes, so—"

"Ours is a rental," Fallon said quickly. "So we can just return it and all use yours. I'm sure you're tired of driving all the time, so now the turns are split three ways. It's perfect."

Despite being one of his more spontaneous life decisions, this felt completely right. Like all Glen had ever really needed was to not be alone—to actually have someone his own age, who thought and felt the same way he did, whom he didn't need to take care of, and who were by his side because they genuinely liked him.

Even better,  _two_  someones. It wasn't something that Glen had ever even known could happen, but here he was. Sexually—and romantically, it seemed—involved with both a man and a woman at once. The  _woman_  part surprised him, but then again most of his life had been built on a series of unexpected events. So he couldn't bring himself to mind. Hell, he really liked Fallon. And the more he liked her, the more physically attractive she became to him.

(With both of them in mind, though, he still physically preferred Mike.)

A week passed, and Glen discovered that their car hadn't actually been a rental, but stolen. And when he subsequently discovered that a lot of what they did, especially for money, was illegal, he wasn't bothered. Or surprised. His first night with them had involved heroin, after all.

As did many nights to follow. Well—not heroin, since too much made it pretty much impossible to have sex, but other drugs. It made sense, really... people like them, who needed to drift to feel right, who needed constant distractions and who weren't able to form real ambitions—they  _needed_  drugs. Smoking and drinking as heavily as he'd done for years had done well, but clearly they hadn't been enough because  _this_  was the best he'd ever felt in his life.

 _This_... whatever this was. It became less easy to define by the day. Mike and Fallon had slipped so seamlessly into his life that as time went on, and his lifestyle slipped further into the drug scene with them, he could no longer pinpoint the day he had met them. Had he known them for one month, or two? Or... three?

During some of his highs, and even simply after certain trips, he felt like he'd known them for years. Had Mike gone to his school? Did he kiss Fallon at a party once, or was that someone else? Then he was sure they must have been there for his first race—no, that was his sister. Or was it. Did he even have a sister...?

Reality always came back to him, in bits and pieces. Sometimes harsher than others. After some indiscernible amount of time, getting back into reality started to feel like an unpleasant, sometimes even painful, _crash_.

Perhaps it was because Glen became vaguely aware of how much time he had spent away from home—away from Beth—without a visit or even a call. And he couldn't go now, not like this, but the more time he spent away the worse the idea of going back became. So he preferred just not having the capacity to think about it.

He remembered the places he had gone with Mike and Fallon. He remembered seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon especially. He remembered the drug dens they'd gone and spent weeks at, and some of the other men and women they'd brought in to join them in bed when they felt like having a fourth. For a little while he would know their name, and then their face faded and they were all just silhouettes beyond what mattered to him now. Mike and Fallon.

He remembered the conversation he had with Mike the night they first had sex. The awareness of that memory came so much later that Glen had no idea how it was still there, but at some point he could remember it in detail—and really what he remembered was how charming Mike was. Come to think of it, he'd probably been on something.

They hadn't been quite this into it before they met him, Fallon told him. It had been a bit of a dryspell, even. She thought that Glen had been what they needed to spice up the relationship.

"It's like an adventure, except it's not leading up to anything," she told him. "We could just stay like this forever and I would be fine."

"I used to be afraid of forever," he muttered in response. "But this doesn't seem so bad."

Later on, he was pretty sure they'd been on a particularly strong dosage of hydrocodone during that conversation.

Keeping track of time in general was near impossible. Probably the only reason Glen wasn't afraid of forever anymore was because he couldn't conceptualize more than a day or so into the future anyway. He retained his ability to drive, to hold conversations, to cook and clean and all that... but time meant nothing. Even when someone outright told him the month and day, it just didn't stick until large portions of time had passed.

Just like that, it had been over a year. If he did the math he would have known exactly how many times he'd been high, how many times he'd gotten sucked off, or fucked, or pretty much everything else because even in this life, some kind of routine was necessary to keep him sane.

The concept of money was also just as meaningless, but at least it wasn't a problem. Making a living was far easier the illegal way—gambling over games of pool and low-key prostitution, mostly. When they were low, Glen and Mike switched out with who was going to help Fallon scam some guys at a bar and who was going to suck a dick or two in the alley behind it.

Occasionally, he did start to wonder if it were even possible for this lifestyle to last forever, but that line of thinking always stopped with either a high or the idea that maybe he would just die within the next few years and end it on a good note.

It had been apparent early on, especially with what Fallon had said, that Glen's real purpose was to bring them closer together. Even aside from the increase in their affinity for drugs, he got the feeling that they'd been looking for something extra to keep their relationship from getting too boring.

He didn't mind. Technically they'd used him a little, yeah, but that didn't make the relationship any less real. When he thought about it, since he didn't feel like he was necessarily unfit for a monogamous relationship, that even made him a key part of the relationship. Take him out and who knew what might have happened.

In the past Glen might have assumed this would be difficult, having to give attention to two different people and make sure it was equal, but he was loving it. When he woke up he got to have  _two_  morning kisses, sometimes both at once. In general he felt twice as loved. And after spending this long having frequent sex with two people, usually at the same time, he had experienced just about every type of sex possible.

The only downside was that he was never alone—though that wasn't necessarily because of there being two other people, or even that they were constantly on the road, but that Fallon was spending more and more time with just him. She fell asleep on him most nights so Mike had to be more off to the side, and she followed him outside of restaurants to smoke with him, and she didn't really hesitate to start conversations when Mike was in the bathroom or on a snack run and then leave him out of them when he came back.

Glen didn't want Mike to become a third wheel, though, since he was in love with him too, so he tried to start spending more one-on-one time with him. To even it out.

But it wasn't easy. Over a few months he grew suspicious that Fallon genuinely preferred him to Mike, and that was getting clearer. Especially when Fallon took a shower one day (after failing to get Glen to join her), and as soon as the water turned on Mike slammed him up against the wall and kissed him.

Unfazed (mostly because he was high), Glen let him do what he wanted, shove his tongue in his mouth and a hand down his pants, and—

"How often do you and Fallon fuck without me?" Mike breathed against him.

"What? Not... not that often, pretty sure not more than you know about." It was hard to think with his mental state as well as Mike's hand still working around him, but he felt vaguely worried.

"Does she try to, though?"

Mike's other hand was running up his back and Glen could only hold him loosely as it occurred to him.  _Shit._  "Yeah, sometimes."

He didn't say anything after that, but he did soften up, and pulled Glen's hands down the back of his pants.

Glen didn't notice that Mike was crying until after they both came.

Not profusely, just wet eyes, but it was still concerning. Glen frowned sympathetically and pushed Mike's hair back, then wiped a thumb over his cheek.

"Babe?"

"It's nothing."

Mike kissed him again, but that didn't make it believable. He broke it apart when they heard the water from the shower turn off, and immediately stepped outside to smoke. (Glen knew he just wanted to be alone—there was no reason to avoid smoking inside—but didn't say anything.)

He then realized that he needed a change of underwear as well as a shower, partially to avoid being stuck in a room with Fallon, and waited outside the bathroom door. When she stepped out naked, she didn't even have time to smile before Glen simply passed her and shut the door behind him.

If the past ten minutes themselves hadn't been sobering enough, his hot shower definitely was.

* * *

 

Things weren't falling apart so much as they were just... weakening. Glen felt guilty for thinking of himself as the main link in the relationship because now it seemed like he had jinxed it and became exactly that.

He was truly the only thing holding them all together now. Mike and Fallon weren't outwardly hostile toward each other, but they were cold. Glen could only assume that they occasionally fought behind his back. The only time they were particularly affectionate was when they were all high together, or when Glen wanted them all to have sex... which was usually when they were high.

It was like watching his own heart break in slow motion. Because he loved both of them, which was no problem because they both still seemed to love him, but he needed them to love each other. He wanted to fix it and he couldn't.

Mike still loved Fallon, he was pretty sure. But he was bitter and jealous that she was taking Glen's time. And Glen could only figure he was even more jealous of  _him_  because Fallon had fallen in love with him.

For a while it felt like it was his fault for breaking them, but... they had been broken before he even got there. It hadn't been the relationship that got too boring for them, but just Mike. Fallon had needed something better, but hadn't wanted to give up her boyfriend. And now she seemed to be over him entirely.

It felt hopeless. Glen was holding down an entire relationship by himself and simultaneously working out his own feelings—and in his desperation to keep them all together, he found another drug den. Maybe if they were all perpetually high for a few weeks with only just enough sobriety to not die, far from reality and far from their own emotions, they would all be content for a while.

And it worked. It was impossible to gauge how long, but Glen would have made a guess at about a week in before he first left them alone together—he was voted "most capable of pretending to be sober" and asked to go out and get some bags of ice.

The nearest gas station was close enough that driving on opiates wasn't too risky, but he still drove slowly enough to take about twenty minutes before getting back. Which was long enough, apparently, for police to get there.

_Oh God._

He was driving just slow enough to see Mike and Fallon, along with a few others, handcuffed and being escorted into the back of separate police cars. For a split second they locked eyes with him, and he couldn't breathe, and in the next second he couldn't see them anymore. He drove past and didn't stop.

They probably thought that he was the one who tipped off the police. Fuck.

Glen had no idea who actually did, but it was an amazing stroke of good luck that he wasn't there when the cops showed up. Hell, it was the only light in this mess.

Part of him knew that this was the least painful way this could have happened, but it was difficult to focus on that. Glen was in shock and he didn't know what to do—if the relationship had continued to slowly burn out, he might have been emotionally prepared. The pain would have already been there and they'd have slipped out of his life as smoothly as they'd slipped in.

But instead, Mike and Fallon were ripped away like a bandaid that had been on too long. The wound had only gotten worse underneath.

He still loved them. And he was still high, but sobering up by the minute.

After a few minutes, he found a rest stop and started crying.

* * *

 

Ironically enough, Glen ended up in jail a month or so later anyway.

He was unlucky enough to run into a cop directly after trying to dine and dash, and though it was obvious he was in extreme detox from drug abuse, they couldn't find any in his system. So all they could do was give him the choice between jail time and a fine.

Since he was pretty much broke now, the remainder of his detox was spent in a jail cell. While his size made him intimidating to both the inmates and guards, sweating and vomiting was so much worse in a confined space, on a bed that was painfully uncomfortable to begin with, and with people watching him the majority of the time. There came a point where Glen was gripping the cold metal sides of the toilet in his jail cell, arms shaking, and decided that this was absolutely not worth it.

In the rare time that he didn't feel like death, thoughts of Beth came to him. She was the one good thing left in his life after all this mess and he couldn't even go back—he couldn't possibly face her. It was way too late. He wasn't even in the right state of mind, yet, to handle the kind of anger he expected her to have. Two years, no visits, not even a call... Beth deserved better.

Meanwhile Mike and Fallon, while he still missed them, were part of the sickness that he flushed out of himself during those couple months he spent in jail. He hoped he never saw them again.

After he was let go, Glen used the little money he still had to drive to the nearest city, Chicago, and started searching for jobs. Constant travelling and hustling pool for money hadn't done him any good, so he figured the only thing to do was settle.

It wasn't like he was giving up, though. He was still away from home, and he'd seen so much at this point that not much else could be accomplished within the U.S. borders. This was still nothing like his old life. Or much of his old self at all, really, but he needed to survive.

For the most part, it was back to physical labor. It was all he  _could_  do—cleaning and building. After several months passed and some of his old qualities began to shine through his jaded exterior again, he remembered his knack for art in high school and managed to get hired to paint a few murals. Those were so refreshing and personally rewarding that he wished it could be a legitimate career, but he sadly wasn't ever recognized by someone who could make that possible.

Only a year after jail did Glen finally get an apartment in Chicago instead of continuing to live in a motel. He didn't understand why, but moving on entirely from the lifestyle he'd had with Mike and Fallon was just... too hard. Even once he'd been able to afford it, just the thought of complete change was devastating.

And once he'd gotten over that, he'd decided that  _every_  part of that life had to go. He'd already promised himself that he wouldn't ever touch drugs again, so that left the car.

He needed a new one, anyway. So he sold it and bought a truck fit for the sort of jobs he worked, and actually got insurance for it this time.

And then he got a dog. He'd always wanted one, and he had to have  _something_  to keep him from being completely miserable at this point in his life. Mid-twenties but looking mid-thirties, working jobs that only contributed to that, living alone with no friends... he needed something aside from movies and alcoholism to make that okay. So he adopted a two-year old pitbull named Bueller from the pound—why someone would name a dog after a new movie character (and  _then_  give it up) was beyond him, but it was too late to change it.

With that, he got his life just comfortable enough that he could be content for the next few years. After all that mess from before, he'd come to the conclusion that monotony was good. It was safe. So long as the things he was doing every day weren't boring, he wanted nothing to change. The same people he made small talk with every day, the same places he went to, the same constant vibes in the air around him... it was what he wanted.

And so he stayed like that.

This time, it took Glen nearly three whole years to want more, and even then it was extremely gradual: There was a lot of leeway in the sort of jobs he took, but the closest he ever got to what truly made him feel good was when he had the chance to paint. One day a man he painted a mural for told him that he had "the soul of an artist"—and Glen sat on that for a long time.

Painting was great, and he had a natural talent for realism, but was it his passion? Was it something he could see himself doing for the rest of his life? Even if it was a profession that he could realistically live off of, no. Not really.

But  _art_  in general. Glen never had a technical mind, but he had physical strength and creativity—the latter of which called to him as vaguely, yet strongly, as the desire for religion would for anyone else. Until it occurred to him, one day, that another thing he was immensely good at was lying. He did it all the time. In fact, he realized it when he was telling a particularly elaborate lie to a coworker regarding why he was late. And what was basically the same thing as lying?  _Acting_.

But of course, real acting wasn't at all easy to get into. He had absolutely no idea how. The next best thing was getting into local stand-up comedy.

It wasn't a terribly huge change, just going to a comedy club in downtown Chicago on Friday nights instead of what he did before—nothing. For a few weeks he just watched, and then he felt confident enough to go up himself. And then he just... told lies. Well-orchestrated and strategically timed lies.

On the off chance that he bombed, he started with a fake name: Neil Flynn. And when he  _didn't_  bomb, the alias stuck.

He didn't expect to be so successful, but then again, he wasn't very surprised. This was something he'd been good at for a long time, and he was only getting more practice this way. Some of his stories were ridiculous lies, some of them were vaguely based on truth, and, after he developed a handful of regulars who had likely realized that everything he said was made up, he started using real stuff that simply sounded fake. The best part about it was, he was dealing with his shithole of a life this way. By hiding it in comedy.

Glen's— _Neil's_  handful of regulars grew into a legitimate local fanbase. It got to the point where having an alias was probably a very good idea in order to keep his professional life away from his personal. Both in that he didn't want anyone who knew him personally to find this place, and he didn't want any fans to find his address.

Plenty were very openly attracted to him—possibly because his fame, while only local, dehumanized him in a positive way. It had been forever since he'd had a relationship or even felt that kind of desire, however, so he was wary. But he was also sex-deprived, so he began to allow himself one-night stands again.

Not just men, either. Having had a long-term relationship with a woman, Glen felt far less restrictive about his sexual preference now. It was easier for him to find women aesthetically pleasing than before, and he didn't even feel the need to be particularly sexually attracted to someone in order to enjoy sex with them.

While harder to please in bed, women also somehow seemed easier to deal with in an actual relationship. Well, he knew that his memories of Fallon influenced that—looking back on it now that he was more objective and stable, in choosing between Mike and Fallon he would have gone with her. Rationally he knew that all women weren't the same, but... that had been the only real relationship he'd ever had. It was all he knew.

So naturally, Glen avoided relationships and attachments in general. He couldn't even have sex with the same person too many times because then it started to resemble closeness and he couldn't handle that. No one could handle  _him_ , he was sure. And the few times he let something go too far, he turned out to be right.

He idealized people too much and then his attachment descended directly into hatred if their response wasn't exactly what he wanted. And then he became self-aware for a while, resigning to the fact that he would someday die alone. Usually, because of how heavily he drank and smoked, he was okay with it. And he was content with just one-night stands and the occasional prostitute. Then when he was no longer okay with it—well, those were the times he ended up letting things go too far.

His local fame as  _Neil Flynn_  went on for a couple years as sort of a background to his regular life. Granted, the "background" was more emotionally fulfilling, but it didn't exactly pay his bills. Even at several nights a week now with extra improv shows and a certain amount of tips, it barely even fed his dog.

But he loved it. Hell, it was the first thing he could remember genuinely enjoying this much. He was an entertainer, and for the first time he had the kind of attention he wanted—from people who listened to him and probably thought about him later, and told other people about him, and maybe even felt like they knew him—and not just people who thought it was cool that he ran fast.

Of course they  _didn't_  know him; they had no  _idea_  what he had gone through and they would never be able to think of him as anything other than this two-dimensional persona he'd created from his most interesting traits. Which admittedly bothered him sometimes, but that was his own fault for refusing to be emotionally intimate with anyone. It didn't matter. He liked this persona.

After a point, he started getting offers to perform his comedy acts in other cities, with better pay and much bigger audiences, but he refused. With that much fame, anonymity was impossible, and Neil Flynn would no longer be a persona, but simply a character. It would escalate to interviews and people dying to know who Glen Matthews really was, and he just couldn't handle that. It was too much pressure to even think about.

One night, after a show, he was approached by a guy who had the  _look_ —Glen immediately knew he was about to make some offer for him to go big, just based on his outfit and hair and expression. The only reason he didn't outright tell him tell him that he wasn't interested was because his mouth was full of water, and in the time it took to swallow, the man managed to get out—

"Hi, I'm a producer of a new movie called  _The Fugitive_ , which is being filmed here in Chicago—"

Glen nearly choked on his water, then motioned for the man to wait until he could speak.

" _The Fugitive_? You mean—the one Harrison Ford's supposed to be in?"

"Yeah, I take it you're a fan of his?"

Glen rapidly blinked, unable to do anything else. If what he thought was happening  _was happening_ , he was in pre-shock.

"...Yeah?"

"Well, we're in mid-production and we still need some minor characters—very minor, very few lines, but you look like the kind of guy who's talented but just hasn't been given enough options. If you're looking to put yourself out there, a speaking role in a major film could be a good step."

He obviously didn't want to "put himself out there," but this guy didn't need to know that. Oh God. This was his chance and he was a goddamn  _grown man_  but he was having such a wild time just trying to stay composed.

"Would I get to meet Harrison Ford?" he couldn't help but ask.

The other man chuckled. "If you can catch him at a time he isn't busy, I don't see why not."

Glen didn't hesitate to exchange information at that, and once he managed to get away from the rest of the crowd, he couldn't resist running outside and screaming a victorious " _YES!_ " into the night.

And to think, he'd been a mouthful of water away from passing up on this.

* * *

 

He ended up with a mere two lines, and overall five seconds of screentime before being killed. It wasn't much at all, not even enough to be a real step in his career if he wanted it to be—other than the fact that he was no more than twenty feet away from Harrison Ford. That much distance was just barely enough to keep him from fucking up such easy lines in excitement.

The take was done twice, only because the director didn't think the stance he took when he aimed the gun was quite professional enough. And then they got it, and Glen fell back a second time, and that was the end of his time on camera.

There was another short scene that showed the beginning of a chase, but in a few minutes, everyone was off of the subway and on the sidelines for a break. And there Harrison Ford was, grabbing a cookie at the snack table three feet away from him.

He couldn't breathe.

What was he supposed to say? Certainly not anything that came to the front of his mind.  _Hey Mr. Ford, you were the very first person I ever masturbated to_ —no, God, he couldn't even think about it. He was also still wearing the transit cop uniform, which immediately pushed his mind to—nope, even worse.

Glen couldn't believe that he hadn't planned and rehearsed what he wanted to say. And now he had to get himself in check quickly or risk making a fool of himself in front of his idol.

"I'm a huge fan," he blurted out, without any kind of polite greeting beforehand.  _Oh no._  Harrison glanced up at him, which made matters worse. He was making direct eye contact, and now he was pretty sure he was sweating.

"Oh wow, hey, you're taller than me," Harrison Ford said to him, smiling and giving him a once-over. Then he stuck out his hand and said, "Sorry. Nice to meet you."

It was only then that he realized he was looking  _down_  at his very first celebrity crush. This man had been one of the only constants throughout his life, and the first thing he'd said to him was a comment on his  _height_.

For a moment he was frozen in place, but Glen finally managed to step forward, take the man's hand, and tell him his name without stuttering.

"So are you more of a Star Wars or Indiana Jones guy, Glen?" Harrison asked.

_Holy shit, he said my name._

"Oh, uh— _A New Hope_  was the first movie I ever saw in theatres," he told him. "I've had the biggest—I'm, I've been one of your biggest fans since I was a kid."

Jesus, he felt like an idiot. And he panicked, wondering if his near slip-up had made him too obvious as a Flaming Queer. If not that, maybe the fact that he was blushing dark red would give him a hint.

But instead: "Oh, nice. You do other acting?"

Now Glen just wanted to cry because of how nice he was being. Making the effort not to was forcing his lips to quiver.

"Just improv and comedy. It's how I got this role, actually."

"Well, sorry you didn't get a bigger one, so we could talk more. I should go get prepped—again, nice meeting you. Maybe I'll see you in Hollywood one day."

With that, Harrison Ford grinned, patted his arm, and walked away. Glen was having a hard time believing any of that had been real.

Soon after he decided that this was indeed reality, he changed back into his own clothes, checked in with one of the producers, and returned above ground to his car. After a drive home, a thorough jacking off, and a solid night's sleep, he felt like a whole new person.

But he still felt bad, because not only was Harrison Ford  _never_  going to see him in Hollywood, but he wasn't even going to see his name in the credits. They were using his alias, like he'd asked, and no one would ever know who played that random transit cop because Neil Flynn wasn't real. It was the way he wanted it—it ensured his lack of real fame—but it did seem a bit weird now.

The remainder of that week went by slowly. Everything felt different—not uncomfortable, but almost  _too_  comfortable—and Glen realized. He had come so far from where he was when he left prison, and now he had even been in a movie... and he felt great. He felt emotionally and mentally stable, or at least enough that he was ready to face the thing he'd been avoiding for years.

He was ready to go back home.

Before his spontaneous revelation could slip into doubt and fear, he acted on it and prepared to move as soon as possible. Within a few days everything he owned was tied down in the back of his truck, Bueller was in the passenger's seat, and all of the people who had vaguely been a part of his life were unknowingly never going to see him again. (Glen didn't plan to move back home, of course, but rather just live nearby.)

Two mornings later, he was standing on the doorstep of his old house. His dad's truck was still there, so he knew he didn't have to worry about finding a new family in this place. But God, he was nervous.

For a moment, he could barely breathe, but he finally did it. He knocked twice, and waited.

...No one answered. He noticed that there was an actual doorbell put in, and tried that instead.

In about ten seconds, the door started to open—and his heart skipped a beat—and it turned out to be Beth on the other side. All grown up, more beautiful than ever. And more importantly, so shocked that she simply stood and stared for what felt like a painfully long time.

"I thought you were dead," she finally signed, looking horrified. Like she wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't looking at a ghost.

"I'm sorry. I know I should have come back."

"Why didn't you?"

At that, Glen could only stare sadly as he failed to come up with a suitable answer. What was he supposed to tell her? That he spent two years on hard drugs? That he'd been too mentally fucked up to come home?

"Mom and Dad both died," she told him. His heart jolted despite how little regard he'd had for them in the past ten years. "Lung cancer and a car accident. I was completely alone. You should have been here—but I didn't have any way to contact you."

Beth looked completely disgusted with him, and it wasn't an expression he ever imagined he'd see on her. It really hurt him.

"I'm sorry," he signed again, more desperately. "If you give me time, I can explain. You don't have to forgive me, but—"

"It's too late for forgiveness." Though a whole six inches shorter, she seemed to tower over him with that. Glen felt like he was shrinking. "I've spent so long without you, and now I'm used to it. You can't disappear without a trace for nine years and then come crashing back into my life and expect me to be fine with it!"

Despite his deep shame, he began to feel anger bubbling up inside of him. He just barely hesitated to express it.

"What about all the years I spent working my ass off? I missed out on a childhood so I could support us. I had no social life because I was busy working for your college fund!"

"That was our parents' fault, not mine. And you can just take it back. I don't need it. I never needed it—you never needed to work as hard as you did. I have a full ride to med school. And I'm sorry you wasted your life, but you're not going to come and waste mine. I don't want to see you anymore."

Glen... couldn't believe it. Not just that he had officially lost the last genuinely important thing in his life, but also that he had just left behind six years' worth of an identity back in Chicago, then driven all the way here only for it to be over this quickly.

He stared at Beth, who looked somewhat sympathetic now. Like she understood how hard it was for him to understand what she wanted him to do and resign himself to it.

"I have a question, though," he finally said, and his sister looked at him expectantly. "How did you know to answer the door?"

"When you press the doorbell, it makes the lights in the house flicker," she told him with the tiniest, last hint of a smile. And then with a quick sign of goodbye, she closed the door.

* * *

 

Until he could find a new job, Glen lived in a motel again. He wanted someplace nearby, but no closer than an hour's drive from home. Though he wanted to respect Beth and leave her alone, he also couldn't bear to return to Chicago—or live in any other state again, for that matter.

God. He had fucked up so bad.

Once or twice he considered just jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge ( _what a way to go_ , he thought), but death was a kind of change he wasn't ready for. It was scary, honestly. He imagined that even if he did drive out there and try for it, he would just end up chickening out.

Regardless, it wouldn't have helped anyone. And he needed to make this right. He needed to  _try_ , for once in his life, to make a difference. To help other people  _and_  himself, and make up for all the damage he'd caused and time he'd wasted.

Except he had no skills. He was barely educated and a bit stupid in general, and his people skills were still in the works of being re-wired. Comedy had helped people—it made them laugh, and gave them entertainment to look forward to, but that didn't feel real enough.

Meanwhile a nearby hospital was hiring new custodial staff.

It wasn't just for the off-chance that Beth one day began working there and was then willing to forgive him—he really felt like it was the best thing. He couldn't possibly be a doctor, of course, but he was able to be near them. And the work he did was still in a hospital. It was the closest he could get.

* * *

 

He fucking  _hated_  doctors.

Saving people aside, they were the biggest assholes he'd ever had the misfortune of knowing—or actually  _not_  knowing, since none of them treated him like a person.

Yes, cleaning was his job. But he had a name, it was right there on his I.D. And yet as soon as he worked there he was no longer Glen, but just.  _The janitor_.

For a while in the beginning it wasn't too bad, being low on everyone's radar. Just being by himself, being ignored, essentially being alone in a room full of people. If he was in an odd mood for attention, he started a conversation with a nurse or pulled a prank on an orderly.

But then it became apparent that he didn't  _matter_. The only people who saw him as an equal were the other custodial staff, and they were all even dumber than him. It wasn't enough to make him want to quit, but he grew bitter. He couldn't stand the lot of them, too high on their horses to even ask a  _lowly janitor_  like himself for his name before ordering him to do something.

And then all the chemicals he worked with only seemed to make him angrier, in a high sort of way. So he eventually decided that anyone who crossed him would get what they deserved. In a way he was doing what he initially wanted—in helping karma take its course, he felt he was helping people.

Glen also changed his I.D. so that anyone who  _did_  want to know his name would have to ask. He wasn't going to allow cheating.

The one highlight was the isolation. He felt great, living alone and having no one other than the occasional romp (most of them prostitutes, these days). He genuinely didn't  _want_  anyone. Bueller's company was all he needed—and when he died, Glen had him stuffed. Which led to a regression in his childhood fascination with taxidermy, and furthermore gave him something to do with his free time other than drink himself to death.

Seven years and a couple hundred stuffed squirrels later, Glen's life was once again in that state of stagnancy that he liked. In fact, this was a new record for the amount of time that his life had remained relatively the same, as well as the amount of time he'd spent without a relationship or even a lasting desire for one.

Until a new intern got a penny stuck in the door.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic took me ten days and fucked up my perception of time, so if you care about the janitor enough to have read it, I really hope you also care enough to leave feedback. 
> 
> Also, I made a playlist to go along with the fic: http://8tracks.com/captainlucifer/glen-matthews


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